NEWBURGH – The Attorney General’s Land Bank Community Revitalization Initiative is making a new allocation of up to $20 million to eligible land banks across the state in addition to the $13 million allocated through a competitive application process last year. The new funding will be announced this fall.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman joined with elected officials and staff from the Newburgh Community Land Bank (NCLB) on Friday to announce a new, competitive round.

The attorney general said this is a goal he set in trying to pull New York out of the mortgage crisis.

“To go after the banks and others whose reckless misconduct brought about the crash in the housing market and the foreclosure crisis, and to get the money we get from those banks and others into the communities that have been hurt, to help the New York families that have been hurt and to help communities like this that have been devastated by the foreclosure crisis,” Schneiderman said.

The Newburgh Community Land Bank received $2.4 million in the last funding round. That was leveraged into a $5 million investment to acquire a number of highly distressed parcels along Lander Street. Schneiderman said Newburgh used that resource to move forward with what he termed an “exceptional Land Bank program”

“That combined public and private financing is enabling the Land Bank to execute a full redevelopment plan here on Lander Street and create a livable appealing neighborhood in the heart of the historic east end district.”

The attorney general also said rehabilitating depressed areas can be a major tool toward reducing crime in this areas. Schneiderman said there are no empirical examples of that having happened, through Land Bank funding, in New York, but it clearly has happened in other states.